RULE #27:
Nest away.
There comes a time in every woman’s pregnancy when she will feel a pressing need to prepare her home for the baby. That time is NOW! RIGHT NOW! I MEAN, RIGHT THIS FREAKING MINUTE!!! Yes, in this last trimester of pregnancy, the urge to “nest” can hardly be overstated. A quiet and mild-mannered friend of mine, who weighs about 95 pounds on a bloated water-weight day, single-handedly wrestled a 150-pound solid walnut rocking chair out of the back of her Subaru after a marathon shopping for-baby trip. While performing this feat, Kristi (who attends church more regularly than Jerry Falwell) was swearing up such a storm, the young children next door were immediately herded indoors. The real culprit? Her 200-pound gym teacher husband who had decided, unwisely, to take a breather and watch a bit of the Broncos game before unloading the car. Kristi was about sixty-five weeks pregnant at the time. She delivered the next day. My own sweet sister Bonnie, equally piqued by her man’s disinterest in furniture rearrangement, decided to take things into her own hands. One Sunday afternoon while she was prowling around the living room looking for things to improve, she realized that her perfectly nice sofa was completely unacceptable in the home where her darling baby would soon reside. A woman of action, Bonnie picked up that full-length sofa and, when she couldn’t shove it out the door, lifted it up and shoved it out the living room window. Needless to say, about halfway through, the sofa got stuck, and despite several people’s subsequent efforts to remove it, there it remained hanging forlornly for more than two weeks. In January. In Colorado. A couple of days later, Bonnie gave birth to a beautiful baby girl who is still a sweet and adorable child, so all I can say is that clearly she got rid of that sofa just in time. My point here is this: There’s no fighting the gravitational pull of nature to nest, so it’s best to just give in. This advice goes double or triple for the five men reading this. Get out your tool belt, your checkbook, and your jumping shoes, and then practice saying, “How high, honey?” until you sound at least a tiny bit sincere. Very good. You may live to see the birth yet.